The Obamanation of Desolation
by Thomas Fleming
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The appearance of John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback, California’s "purpose-driven" church marks the ultimate ascent of Rick Warren to the Gantry-in-Chief of the P.T. Barnum Church of America. Warren’s success is living proof of Barnum’s oft-quoted observation that there is a sucker born every minute. In the event, Obama’s imitation of Christianity was so poor that even John McCain—the very model of a Christian divorcé–looked good by comparison. Obama could barely bring himself to stutter out the Scriptural passages he had memorized as his answer to the scripted questions.
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Obama needs to establish church-cred, if he is ever going to win the votes of the people he hates and fears. I mean White People. It is true that the majority of Obama supporters are White People, but most of them fall into the category of self-hating Whites otherwise known as liberals. A liberal, as I never tire of quoting (from Robert Frost), is someone who would not take his own side in an argument. Rich liberals naturally support high taxes and extravagant government expenditures on the poor, preferably the undeserving poor. A male liberal—we can hardly call such creatures men—favors women’s rights; heterosexual liberals favor “Gay” “marriage,” and European-American liberals prefer all cultures to that of Europe. And, if these idiots condescend to note their skin color, they hate it or at least they think they do.
Mr. Obama may or may not like the White liberals who burn incense to his TV images that fill up the evening news broadcasts, but he knows he cannot stand the illiberal Whites who do not hate themselves. Obama spent two decades attending Trinity United Church of Christ and claimed its pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as his friend and mentor before discovering that Wright was an anti-White bigot. He even borrowed his book title “The Audacity of Hope from one of Wright’s sermons. Every time I hear that phrase—so redolent of the old stereotype of half-educated blacks who insert pretentious words into their conversation–I imagine how Johnny Lee, aka Algonquin J. Calhoun, would deliver it. Like all the stars of the Amos ‘N Andy television show, Lee was a fine comic actor, and it is some kind of weird racism that has sent immortal comics like Tim Moore (Kingfish) and Spencer Williams (Andy) down the memory hole. The NAACP’s persecution of Amos ‘N Andy does prove one thing, and that is that black liberals (including Barack Obama) hate themselves as much as white liberals do. What is left for them to love? Not much.
Jeremiah Wright not only hates Whites, he does not even pretend he doesn’t. Imagine the SPLC in a parallel case, if it found out that Pat Buchanan regarded the comparatively mild David Duke as his mentor. The DNC and the media can tell any lies they like, but they cannot change the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate hates Whites, including the members of his mother’s family who showed him every kindness. Compared with the average self-proclaimed white bigot who says he loves his ancestors, Obama is one sick and sorry excuse for a human being.
The Wright story does have its lighter side. It is Obama’s membership in Wright’s “church” that has justified his claim to be a Christian, and his claim to be a Christian is his best evidence that he was never a Muslim. No one has called him on this, so far as I know, even Christians who are fully aware that the United Church of Christ has nothing to do with the historical Christian faith taught by the apostles. Some Christians have questioned Obama’s credentials as a Christian because of his support for abortion and infanticide, but in the UCC a woman’s right to kill her children is part of the creed, perhaps the only article of faith (apart from support for “Gay” “marriage”) from which no dissent is permitted. When the UCC says “God is still speaking,” they do not bother to explain why their “God” has been contradicting himself so much. I used to think black people had more sense than to put any stock in the post-Christian conventicles that joined together in the great anti-Church known as the United Church of Christ, but in joining the Middle Class upwardly mobile Blacks have apparently become as gullible as their white counterparts.
If membership in the UCC is the best argument Obama has for refuting the claim he is a Muslim, he would have to explain how the leader of the Nation of Islam came to speak at his “church.” But, I suppose, better Louis Farrakhan than Jeremiah Wright or Rick Warren. No, I do not think Barack Obama worships Allah or any other “god” he cannot see in his own mirror. In the solipsistic universe he makes up from speech to speech, press conference to press conference, there is no god but Barack and Obama is his prophet.
How did we ever reach the point where an Obama could be the presidential candidate of a major party? A political unknown in Illinois until the Republicans, in one of their frequent fits of self-destructive frenzy, decided to run Allan Keyes against Obama. That is how this Marxist nonentity entered the Senate, where he did nothing for a year or so and then decided that he was that any boy in America who could refuse to grow up and become president. And, although he made Hilary Clinton appear to be a conservative or at least a pragmatist, people still voted for him. Who are they?
I understand why blacks vote for a black candidate, though by the same token Germans should revere the memory of Adolf Hitler and Georgians would have a statue of Stalin in his home town. (Oops.) I can also understand why public school teachers, social workers, and other welfare-dependents vote for a politicians who will certainly increase their income and power. But setting aside race-loyalty, greed, and the libido dominandi, how could anyone else hold his nose long enough to vote for anyone who talks in that smarmy adenoidal voice? When Obama gets on his pulpit, it sounds almost like he is swallowing his words in a sea of phlegm. He does not so much speak as (to quote what Alexander Wolcott once said of a theater audience) strum his catarrh. His self-righteous public persona should grate on the sensibilities of normal people–like nails on a chalkboard or the voice of Mariah Carey. And yet, some otherwise normal people voted for him in the primaries and will vote for him again in the general election. Why or rather how?
A few months ago I had a white driver in Texas, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Obama. When I politely asked him why, he explained, anyone will be better than Bush. That is not an easy argument to refute—except in the case of Obama and McCain. The one great comfort of this campaign is that we know the outcome: Whoever wins will turn out to be the worst president in American history. What I wanted to ask him, though, was how could a working white guy vote for a man who so obviously hates him and his people. The driver was, admittedly, not one of those gun-toting religious bigots Obama is so afraid of, but an Obama administration, backed by a Democratic Congress, will certainly do everything possible to enhance the opportunities of everyone who is not white while forcing white taxpayers—and, let us be honest, we do pay most of the taxes because we have most of the money—to fund what might be described as Operation White Out.
Here is an allegedly true story going round the Internet. “Overheard in New York City:
Thug #1: Yo, I can’t wait for Obama to win the election, yo! He gonna make white people illegal!
Thug #2 (stopping dead in his tracks): You one ignorant m-f, ain’t you?”
The first thug, though something of a dreamer, does at least reflect something of the hopes that are entertained in the event of an Obama victory.
The racial logic of the Obama campaign is far from new; it is as old as Affirmative Action programs that ask white parents to take privileges away from their own children to give special assistance to the children of strangers, so long as the strangers belong to a different race. It is one thing to argue that we should practice charity toward the poor or even that we should be selectively more charitable, for one reason or another, to this or that group of poor people, but quite another to ask me to put the needs of my own children—along with those of my nieces and nephews, grandchildren and cousins, neighbors and friends—behind the needs of other people. However you describe Affirmative Action and minority set-asides, they represent a deliberate and systematic policy of discrimination against people like me in favor of people not like me simply because they are not like me. Such disgusting and immoral policies are worse than any form of racism I have encountered because they teach us to hate precisely those whom we are most supposed to love.
An electorate that accepted the Affirmative Action policies imposed on it by the political class had already made a national suicide pact. American Whites simply cannot wait to be marginalized, and in the media they are already reserving places in the internment camps—for you and me and also for them. One of the big news stories this summer was the revised date by which the Whites will be a minority in the United States. News readers and columnists could barely contain their glee and actually took some time off from extolling Obama. On ABC Charley Gibson and the gang were like small children at a birthday party, unable to decide which to eat first—the cake or the ice cream. Oh boy, you could hear their minds turning over, “We’re going to be aliens in our own country.”
At this point, ordinarily, I would say something about the problem of white backlash being worse than the anti-white racism of Obama. But there is no backlash to speak or complain about. Bubba has got better things to worry about than his second-class status. There’s the new truck, American Idol, and, if he is really ambitious, a meth lab. I expected, at least, to see NOBAMA signs—a GOP effort whose creators insist is not racist– cropping up around town, but I have yet to see even one. When I made my first Nobama joke, even before Nobama.com was put up, it was greeted with unease or rather dis-ease, since we are all dying of a surfeit of sensitivity. It may hardly matter at this point who wins the election, because America is already an Obama-Nation (this pun courtesy of the “Christian” “Right”).
Yes, I know. Describing the Obama campaign as an expression of anti-White racism proves I am a bigot. Somebody, call the Southern Poverty Law Center so they can advance me in their rankings. Bigotry these days has nothing to do with the way you treat people or even with what you actually say. Bigotry is what they say you are thinking when the play your speech backward at half speed. As I have said long ago and many times, we have only two choices in America: The first is a society that is legally color-blind, that is, a political and judicial system that does not discriminate on the basis of race though it cannot, on the other hand, prevent people from following their personal whims in private life. This is what I have always advocated, and it may be one of many possible dreams arising from the classical liberal fantasy that must be dear to the hearts of Americans. The other choice is a society that discriminates on the basis of race. If that is the choice–and it is in fact the choice Obama is forcing on us–we are in something of a bind.
The Obamanation is a racist nation that will leave white Americans few honorable options. They can, of course, emigrate, an option that gets more attractive every day. If they stay, they will have to resist the temptation to turn liberal and sign on to the suicide pact. If they refuse to sell out, all too many will lose their souls in a poisonous hatred that may drag them down as low as Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright. In resisting the campaign to "make white people illegal," as every sensible person of any color should, we should not make the mistake of blaming black people for the suicide we continue to inflict on ourselves. We white males are the problem, not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans. We–at least the liberal part of "we"– turned away from our religion and our civilization; we made war on property and marriage; we rejected Haydn and Sophocles in favor of John Cage and Kate Chopin. We have emasculated ourselves, pithed our brains, destroyed our vision and hearing, and now, all that is left, is to vote for a candidate whose rhetoric at least is telling us to fling our worthless carcasses off the cliff. I blush even to hint at this but John McCain is now the only alternative to suicide.
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1 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 19 August 2008:
I believe Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has made the definitive argument for an Obama vote: a vote for McCain is an endorsement of the Bush administration. We Californians won’t face a dilemma. We can vote third party in full knowledge that our vote won’t change the outcome (a silver lining coming soon to you inhabitants of the rest of the country!).
2 Comment by TJF on 19 August 2008:
A vote for McCain may well be a serious mistake, one that I do not intend to make, but a vote for Obama is nothing less than a suicidal gesture whose only excuse can be insanity, stupidity, or youthful indiscretion.
3 Comment by tom davis on 19 August 2008:
As of now I plan to vote for Bob Barr. I figure that if we (constitutionalists) are going to loose, better to loose quickly with Obama than slowly with McCain. Maybe I’ll still be young enough to take part in the aftermath.
Am I wrong? Is Fleming suggesting paleos get drunk and vote for McCain? Our recent hero Ron Paul would not agree. What should we then do?
4 Comment by TJF on 19 August 2008:
No, I am not suggesting we vote for McCain, though I can understand why people are tempted in this case. What I am seeing is that of the two alternatives that exist–there is no third party candidate to attract any attention this time–to vote for one is to support our destruction while to vote for the other will only contribute to the steady destruction of what is left of our country. I don’t, by the way, have any political heroes and if I were inclined to hero-worship, Dr. Paul–as decent as he is–would not cause me to bend the knee. I rarely vote and am beginning to consider the whole democratic apparatus as a form of collaboration with the enemy, but this election is sort of a reply of Clinton v. Dole, except that Clinton was an intelligent pragmatist and Dole an often witty conservative who sold out. Obama is as much worse than Clinton as McCain is worse than Dole the Albanian lobbyist. The old expression “between a rock and a hard place” comes to mind, but the rock is Mt. Everest and the hard place is Hell.
5 Comment by John Rutowicz on 19 August 2008:
This is one of the best, most profoundly well written articles I’ve ever read. It is exactly hits the mark. I also was quite depressed to read of the 2042 date for the advent of white minority status, and also an article on Zogby’s “First Global” generation. The future (in this world, at least) seems hopeless. I am teaching my daughters German for academic purposes, but perhaps for emigration purposes as well. Although Germany seems every bit as suicidal as the U.S. Maybe Icelandic is the answer?
6 Pingback by Politeuma · Obamanation of Desolation on 19 August 2008:
[...] ~ Thomas Fleming [...]
7 Comment by Bob on 19 August 2008:
I agree with Mr. Rutowicz’ sentiments about this essay.
8 Comment by John Rutowicz on 19 August 2008:
“If they refuse to sell out, all too many will lose their souls in a poisonous hatred that may drag them down as low as Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.”
This is very true. Christians must constantly pray for their enemies while fighting against them. Daily repentance, a good beer, and a little humor often help to chase away depression and hatred.
I’ve made up a campaign button that says “Stick it to Whitey: Obama ‘08″. I plan to wear it on my back-pack and walk arould the local university at lunch time in order to annoy all the Obamunists.
9 Comment by Red Phillips on 19 August 2008:
Great essay. No beating around the bush here.
I know Dr. Fleming doesn’t agree, but I will be voting for Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party nominee. Unfortunately, in our rigged system, running third party is not about actually getting elected. The third party candidate who actually thinks he can win, other than a few rare exceptions, is naive. Third party candidates run to raise awareness, advance an agenda and give decent people a choice.
If a gun were held to my head, I would probably take a bullet. If a gun was held to a family member’s head, I would reluctantly vote for McCain. I don’t buy the scenario that conservatives and conservatism will be better served by the election of Obama. The election of Obama will mean we have already lost.
10 Pingback by Conservative Heritage Times » Thomas Fleming Tells it Like it Is About Obama! on 19 August 2008:
[...] Get a load of this essayat ChroniclesMagazine(dot)org. One thing you can say about Dr. Fleming, he sure tells it like it is. I guess it is a sad commentary on our emasculated, PCfied culture, that telling it like it is is a remarkable quality. Jeremiah Wright not only hates Whites, he does not even pretend he doesn’t. Imagine the SPLC in a parallel case, if it found out that Pat Buchanan regarded the comparatively mild David Duke as his mentor. The DNC and the media can tell any lies they like, but they cannot change the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate hates Whites, including the members of his mother’s family who showed him every kindness. Compared with the average self-proclaimed white bigot who says he loves his ancestors, Obama is one sick and sorry excuse for a human being. [...]
11 Comment by TJF on 19 August 2008:
It is not up to me to tell Dr. Red how to vote. Obviously any vote against the party-state is a vote of no-confidence and can have a good effect. What I have told him in the past is that neither Baldwin nor previous Constitution Party candidates have the necessary clarity and coherence to invite principled support. On great advantage the Libertarians have had is that their approach to politics grows out of a set of principles. Unfortunately, their first principles are either wrong or of such a secondary nature that they serve to distort rather than to clarify issues. Having said that, I would only discourage you or anyone from choosing a particular third party candidate if I had a better alternative, which, alas, I do not.
Your closing sentence is all too correct. Another way of putting it is that some conservatives expect a President Obama either to radicalize conservative opposition or to discredit the Left. But that is like a German Jew saying, “Go ahead, let Hitler take over. He’ll discredit anti-Semitism for ever.” The price, in both instances, is too high, but in the case of Obama, the fact that he can even come close means that a very large proportion of the American people are not sane enough even to look out for their own interests.
12 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 19 August 2008:
“We white males are the problem…..” That is the fundamental truth that “conservatives” and “white nationalists” will not acknowledge.
13 Comment by woodcutter on 19 August 2008:
Dr. Flemming, if you decide to leave the country don’t bother coming to Canada. We are already (in some ways) where the USA is heading. Why just the other day I was in the bank where my wife works and looking around at all the brochures and posters, I was unable to find a picture of a white anglo saxon man pictured on any of them. Not only is this way of thinking government imposed here but the commercial sector has also embraced it completely. Dr. Flemming …. if you become to down hearted you can always take a bus ride to a good viking fish boil and sing your way back to town! Not a permanent cure, but a good diversion.
14 Comment by Scott Palmer on 19 August 2008:
I’m not a supporter of Obama in the sense that I think he would make a good president. He might; more likely, he won’t. However, I’m sure that McCain would be a catastrophe.
Forced to choose between certain doom and probable doom, I’ll take the latter.
After eight years of Bush-Cheney, our situation in America is so desperate that our best hope is to roll the dice with Obama, hoping that he’s neither a corporate tool nor a Black Panther in Armani.
Hence, Obama.
May God have mercy on us.
15 Comment by Matt on 19 August 2008:
The esteemed TJF writes: “I rarely vote and am beginning to consider the whole democratic apparatus as a form of collaboration with the enemy….” But doesn’t that type of resignation compound the problem?
I fully agree that we must either choose to be citizens under the blind rule of law (in your example, a judicial system that will not discriminate on the basis of color) or victims/perpetrators of racism — in effect, subjects of the whims of a ruling elite or a popular majority.
It is one thing to observe present-day events and demonstrate how the many shortcomings of our popular democracy undermine the moral fabric of this nation. It is quite another to adopt a nearly fatalistic view of the future of this nation and suggest that white emigration might be our proper solution. Might there be another approach? Shouldn’t we seek the lesser of the two evils through the ballot box while reinforcing in our private lives the learning and values that have given us the ability to be critical of what, at least today, remains one of the freest, wealthiest and most powerful countries on earth?
16 Pingback by Beska droppar » I valet och kvalet on 19 August 2008:
[...] Vem är inte trött på Obama – och hans politiskt korrekta, hans europeiska tillbedjare? Vem är inte rädd för McCain? Som så ofta ger oss The Chronicles perspektiv på dilemmat. Här. [...]
17 Comment by roho on 19 August 2008:
“Chuck Baldwin”!………Run Chuck run!
18 Comment by Thomas Miller on 19 August 2008:
Scott Palmer @14
“Forced to choose between certain doom and probable doom, I’ll take the latter.”
You’ve just revealed yourself to be a coward, sir. You are saying in effect, my best chance is in the safety of the herd. The brave man would say I will choose the option for which I will be doomed, but principled.
19 Comment by Frank on 19 August 2008:
Dr. Fleming,
I’ll vote (Baldwin of course), but as I see it there are other far more important things to focus on, which you’d agree.
A nativist backlash could still arise. It’s certainly in the background, and I suspect a major source of McCain’s popularity. Nobama is a good idea – I hadn’t yet heard that.
Self hating liberals remind of white South African Marxists who had to be replaced in South Africa because of ethnicity after bringing the ANC to power.
—
With all due respect, this is an impossible dream.
Nevertheless, your willingness to speak honestly is admirable in this nonEurocentric leviathan.
20 Comment by Red Phillips on 19 August 2008:
Please take a look at the the Conservative Exodus Project website and sign out pledge. (Click on my name above.) It is a pledge to either not vote or vote third party. We don’t name a specific third party or a specific candidate so more can sign.
21 Comment by Chinese Conservative on 19 August 2008:
TJF: Your closing sentence is all too correct. Another way of putting it is that some conservatives expect a President Obama either to radicalize conservative opposition or to discredit the Left. But that is like a German Jew saying, “Go ahead, let Hitler take over. He’ll discredit anti-Semitism for ever.” The price, in both instances, is too high, but in the case of Obama, the fact that he can even come close means that a very large proportion of the American people are not sane enough even to look out for their own interests.
Actually Juan McLame is more dangerous than Obama because with Obama Republicans will oppose him for partisan political gain. They will however support McLame liberal agenda. And yeah since both McCain and Obama are pro-abortion it is like having Hitler take over except Hitler did not manage to kill 50 million people. We should never compromise with evil. I am starting to think I was a mistake to get involved in the Soviet and Nazi fight because Stalin killed even more people. Never choose what appears to be the lesser of two evils because the lesser might actually do more damage.
22 Comment by Nathan Friend on 19 August 2008:
I have been reading Chronicles articles for the past few months and I must admit that I have been duly impressed by what I have read. Thomas Flemming may be correct that we are in a tight place between Obama’s affirmative-action, sodomite, Christian-hating lobby versus McCain’s pro-Israel, neocon, confront Russia and the world with a sinking dollar and thin, overstretched army lobby. That is no choice since it is, metaphorically, a vote for Stalin or Hitler. Meanwhile, our Constitutional rights in the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Amendments dissolve quietly into that good night, as the Imperial Presidency simultaneously grows, Congress emasculates itself, and all without a word of protest from our stupid, fourth estate. Maybe I should embrace Christian quietism, simply acknowledge that I live in a tyranny and there is not a thing I can do about it, pay my taxes quietly, pray for the magistrate and look forward to the New Jerusalem.
Yours truly in Christ,
Nathan Friend
23 Comment by pablo H on 19 August 2008:
I plan on voting 3rd Party but hope Obama wins over McCain. McCain is simply much more dangerous than Obama. There is no substantive difference between the two on any issue of importance, immigration, trade, federal spending, multiculturalism, etc. McCain however constantly trades on his Vietnam “Hero” status to fool people into thinking he’s a 21st century Teddy Roosevelt, when he’s simply the dream candidate of the Global Elite.
The average American will quickly desert Obama if he’s too overt in selling this country out. Even Joe Sixpack will be upset if a half-black President named Obama tries to force “Amnesty” down our throat. But if “Patriotic War Hero” John McCain, supported byl all the Republican Party hacks, pushes “Amnesty” – it will pass. The real danger is not the obvious enemy, but someone with all the right credentials and background who betrays his own.
24 Comment by Ronald Kyser on 19 August 2008:
Not to spoil anyone’s party by introducing a silver lining, but there exists here a long-overdue opportunity to use a President Obamcain to discredit the office itself, or at least to knock it down a few pegs. The best (political) advice so far has come from, of all people, Michelle Malkin. After the old white guy clinched his party’s nomination, to the groans of its rank-and-file, she wrote a scathing column (Feb. 7) asking, essentially, have you forgotten all the other offices?
The old white guy will probably beat the young colored fellow for two reasons. OWG’s party owns the office unless they throw it away; in every election more folks vote against YCF’s party than for it, so he has to pray for his opponent’s self-destruction. Also, YCF’s main albatross is not that black people like him, but that college kids love him. Ask Presidents McCarthy, McGovern, Anderson, Hart, Dean and Paul what that does to your candidacy.
25 Comment by Lord Karth on 20 August 2008:
Scott @ 14:
The national situation, while certainly not good, isn’t anywhere near as bad as it has been. If you’re old enough, you may perhaps remember the late 70s/early 80s, where there was real fear, and in intelligent circles to boot, that the US would either be invaded and occupied by Soviet troops or be devastated by a nuclear war.
Our current challenge is a little different; that of maintaining (perhaps “re-establishing” would be a better word) the viability of traditional culture in what used to be our own country, in the face of an expanding State/Corporate apparatus allied with alien elements. Simple recognition that those of us who still try to adhere to traditional Christian and American principles are no longer running the show is an important first step in dealing with the problem.
In terms of practical steps to address the problem, voting in a Presidential election is not going to help matters much, no matter who you vote for. The path of central-government spending (thanks to the perfidious Boomers and their immediate predecessors) is largely locked in and will not be changed no matter who gets in. There are minor stylistic and rhetorical differences between Obama and McCain, but the overall policy thrusts of the two are very similar. Both of them believe in maintaining an elephantine central government. Both of them will try to maintain the worldwide Empire (despite Obama’s flightier rhetoric), and both of them will go three sides ’round the barn to maintain the domestic Empire of entitlements, “civil rights” and reduced restraints on personal behavior that make up the current social/political regime. What has been described on other sites as a “Benedict option”—withdrawing from the dominant culture to the maximum extent feasible—may be the de facto best tactic for survival at this point, at least until the current regime collapses of its own weight.
If any of you have better ideas, let me know. What the heck, I could be wrong.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
26 Comment by Chris on 20 August 2008:
Matt,
The resignation you lament, far from compounding the problem, is precisely what is needed to ever resolve it. Why? Because if you have any optimism at all about our vote having positive effects then you do not understand the situation you are in. And understanding of one’s predicament is essential to getting out of it.
I don’t believe Dr. Fleming sees white emigration as a plausible solution for most of us. His comment seems to be a partly facetious, partly serious suggestion – one that we must unbelievably understand the reasoning behind given the condition we have fallen into.
As for your solution, I don’t see why voting must be a part of it. It will get you nowhere and won’t do anybody any good. As Dr. Fleming has suggested in various ways at various times, we’re better off spending our time studying ancient Greece and Rome, learning some European languages, studying Christianity, and – if we feel the need to think politically – read (besides the ancients) men such as Jefferson and Calhoun. Then we can give ourselves and those we care about a glimmer of hope. Fretting over a modern American political contest is not only pointless; it is playing the enemy’s game on the enemy’s turf with the rules and language all designed to obliterate your good intentions.
Instead of worrying about McCain and Obama, why not buy one of Dr. Fleming’s courses and learn something about your civilization’s origins? Or if you have to learn about America, read some of the books on Clyde Wilson’s lewrockwell list.
27 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 20 August 2008:
#25 Matt
Do you have a link to Dr. Wilson’s reading list?
28 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
Shut legal immgration down to the lowest possible level. This would be 0. Deport all illegal aliens. Deport the asian and muslim fifth columns. This would be a start in the reclamation of America.
29 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
I want to make it clear that I do not presume to give anyone advice on what to do in the world we live in. I have many friends in the US who live in pleasant communities, surrounded by kinfolk and friends. Emigration would be foolish, perhaps wicked. There are others who find themselves in less enviable situations and may well consider emigration. I could never leave completely because of family connections, but I could choose to spend half the year outside a country that is not only committing suicide but extremely boring. Our choices seem to come down to McDonalds or Starbucks, that is, between cheap vulgarity and pretentious vulgarity. One can always choose not to watch TV, listen to pop music, read best-sellers, or eat out except out of necessity or at places you know–and for the most part this is what I do. But that is in itself a form of exile, and decent people inevitably become aliens, if they reside in Sodom.
I would suggest, however, not that people don’t vote but that they take a serious look at the principle and practice of mass democracy. Within coherent communities, political institutions are always based to some extent on consent, and it does not matter whether the system is monarchical, oligarchical, or democratic. Tyrannies learn how to manufacture consent and to manipulate it. To take part in such a system, without a clear understanding of what it is, is to collaborate with one’s oppressors. I vote from time to time when a candidate seems to present a decent alternative–I don’t ask for perfection, only an alternative. But a wise man chooses not to be a fool for anyone. This is neither cynicism nor despair. Some good can often be done in the political arena, and God bless those who try to do it. But there are other, far more important arenas of life where we can do good, and if political interests cause us to neglect our families, friends and the duty to cultivate ourselves, then it would be better to abandon politics entirely. Read Tacitus. Like most of us in this discussion, he was a disgruntled republican, dissatisfied with even good emperors. However, he also expresses a good deal of disapproval of the Stoic extremists who deliberately insulted Vespasian–far from being a bad rulers-and had to commit suicide. Tacitus seems to suggest that for all their undoubted nobility, the Stoic senators were playing a game they could not win, unlike the younger Cato who had half a chance of preventing Caesar from establishing his permanent dictatorship. Cato lost, fighting a good fight with desperate odds. But what did Helvidius Priscus hope to accomplish? It is up to every man to decide whether he lives in 50. BC or 70 AD, but a wise man knows that his life is too precious to throw away in futile resistance.
Anyone who feared a Soviet invasion in 1980 was not paying attention. Although a staunch Cold Warrior and living in the isolation of a South Carolina village without TV or newspapers, I knew the USSR was a paper tiger for several reasons. First, in principle, no state based on entirely false principles can long survive; second, intelligent visitors to Eastern Europe, e.g., Thomas Molnar, were telling me that Hungarian and Polish intellectuals were openly mocking Marxism. No evil empire is invincible, not the USSR and not the USSA.
30 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
To Horace Grady. Of course you are right, but the fact that there can even be a debate on this issue–a debate we have been losing for over 30 years, is a good indication of how badly off we are. Before we can close the border, we would have to close the newspapers and TV stations, but before we do that, we would have to shut down the universities and public school systems, and before we could shut down the schools, we would have to have a serious and dedicated minority of Americans with their heads straight. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the man was lost, for want of a man the kingdom was lost–all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
31 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
Dr. Wilson
If you have ever spent any time reading American Renassaince you would know that there has been very serious criticism of White Males.
However, it is not just about White Males. Post-1965 non-whites-such as the wealthy hindu community-are active players in the racial and economic dispossession of European Americans. They now have the political power to perpetuate post-1965 immigration policy.
Resistance to racial and economic dispossession will provoke a counter-resistance.
It is infantile to think that electing Chuck Baldwin president of the United States will make everything alright. The problem is so deep. It will take a massive revolt from the bottom.
We may have come very close the termination of post-1965 policy the weeks afte 9/11. The Hindu and Muslim “Americans” were very concerned that the post-1965 immigration was comming to a rapid end. This is why they began to make threats of political reataliation in the mass media. I can give you several examples of this.
32 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
I highly recommend that you all read philosoper Judith Jarvis Thompson’s essay in defense of affirmative action. It is the classic liberal defense of affirmative action which openly recognizes and justifies discrimination against European Americans because it serves a greater social good.Some of you may know that Thompson is a very well known analytic philosopher. One of the points Thompson makes is that the existence of scarce resources in the US requires a rationing of these scarce resources on the basis of race…to achieve the greater good of social justice. This touches upon the color blind affirmative action dilema TJF raised. Supporters of affirmative action understand the fact of resource scarcity. Despite this, they extend affirmative action to both post-1965 hispanics and asians. Resource scarcity-there are quite a few of them around ,pick your favorite-makes a color blind society impossible. I mean if there was massive amount of these resources to go around, what would be the point of having affirmative action? There would be no need for it. Liberal and corporate supporters of affirmative action are playing with fire.The interaction affirmative action and post-1965 immigration policy increases the level of gasoline in the basement.
33 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
There will also be very strong reisistance to the termination of affirmative action. Now, if resources in the US were in great abundance, the termination of affirmative action wouldn’t be a big deal. Plenty of resources to go around and everyone one will be happy. Of course this is the magical thinking point of view.
I believe a line has been crossed in the US. And as a consequence, I think we have entered a very dangerous situation. Is this what the Liberals wanted all along or a they just very sick people who have no idea what they have done?
The expansion of affirmative action to post-1965 non-whites action grows out of in ideology which at its core contains an intense hatred of European Americans. You all now that affirmative action was hatched in the head of Richard Nixon and Ehrlichman? Right?
34 Comment by Ronduck on 20 August 2008:
@31Horace Grady
Dr. Wilson
However, it is not just about White Males. Post-1965 non-whites-such as the wealthy hindu community-are active players in the racial and economic dispossession of European Americans. They now have the political power to perpetuate post-1965 immigration policy.
We may have come very close the termination of post-1965 policy the weeks afte 9/11. The Hindu and Muslim “Americans” were very concerned that the post-1965 immigration was comming to a rapid end. This is why they began to make threats of political reataliation in the mass media. I can give you several examples of this.
I agree with what you are saying, but could you please give a few links supporting the Hindu subversion?
35 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 20 August 2008:
Fleming: “Jeremiah Wright not only hates Whites, he does not even pretend he doesn’t. Imagine the SPLC in a parallel case, if it found out that Pat Buchanan regarded the comparatively mild David Duke as his mentor. The DNC and the media can tell any lies they like, but they cannot change the fact that the Democratic presidential candidate hates Whites, including the members of his mother’s family who showed him every kindness. Compared with the average self-proclaimed white bigot who says he loves his ancestors, Obama is one sick and sorry excuse for a human being.”
Great quote. I don’t blame Obama for identifying with his black ancestors. The product of black-white procreation will look more black, so it is natural for the child to so identify. (For example, I recently read that the likelihood of a white blue-eyed parent and a black parent to produce a child with blue eyes is less than one in a thousand. Such can also be said for hair texture, noses, etc.) So, it is quite natural for Obama to over-identify with his black kin. Regardless, Obama is hostile towards me and my ancestry, so I naturally cannot support him.
Both Obama and McCain are terrible. Because somebody criticizes one, he does not necessarily endorse the other. If one is anti-Scylla, must he be pro-Charybdis?
36 Comment by Phiz on 20 August 2008:
‘I suppose, better Louis Farrakhan than Jeremiah Wright or Rick Warren’
Could Dr Fleming explain his objections to Rick Warren? I don’t see where Pastor Warren deviates from Christianity to the extent that a black-supremecist violent Muslim is nearer the Truth.
37 Comment by moviedude on 20 August 2008:
Operation White Out, very well put. Too bad Georgia didnt get into NATO, I for one would be cheering for the Russians. At least there you know who owns you, instead of this ruse of democracy our society is stuffing down my throat.
38 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
Ronduck
Sure. Right after 9/11-two weeks maybe-on the front page of the New York Times there was an article about how the Pakistani “American” community was mobilizing to a possible shutdown of immigration in response to 9/11. There was a massive amount of anger directed towards muslims and south asians immediately after 9/11. No big secret. A represntative from a major Pakistani “American” organizatin was quoted as saying in the NYT -this was issued as a threat to White America by the way-that if immgration was shut down, the Pakistani “American” community would politically retaliate.
It also happened on two occasions on the Lou Dobbs show a little over four years ago. Instance number1)Dobbs was doing a segment on the H-1B visa program. He had on as a guest a multimillioniare Hindu “American” who was a spokesman for a large and politically powerfull Hindu “American” organization. This guy didn’t pull any punches with Dobbs. HEesaid point blank to Dobbs:”If the H-1 B and L-1 B visa programs are shut down, there will be retaliation”. These were his exact words. Instance number two:Lou Dobbs was doing a segment on the outsourcing of American jobs. There was a video clip of White American Engineers and computer programmers busting into a meeting in NYC of hindu “Americans” who were plotting with CEOs to export American jobs to India. Dobbs had on as a guest one the hindu “Americans” at this cabal. He was a young,agressive and wealthy hindu “American” . He, like his fellow countrymen who was on a week earlier issued a direct treat to European Americans that if there was a shut down of the program to export American jobs to India, the Indian “American” community would retaliate. Nice isn’t it?
I’ll try and track down the exact dates of these shows so I can obtain transcripts. At the time I was watching these shows, I was shaving and giving a bed bath to my brother who was afflicted with the same neurological disease that a famous German American who played for the New York Yankees came down with. My late brother was also a victim of the H-1B visa program. Some White American families have had to take the full blow of post-1965 immgration policy.
39 Comment by D Simmons on 20 August 2008:
The people you call liberals really don’t believe in anything, those androgenous metrosexuals you mention categorize on the basis of “cool/notcool.” If you wish to do research on this for some reason the blog “the stuff white people like”, that site being perhaps the best compilation of this phenomenon.
40 Comment by Michael Hill on 20 August 2008:
Dr. Fleming, along with Dr. Wilson, should be heeded by everyone who reads Chronicles.
If I vote, it will be only to write in someone such as Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny. American elections are low comedy indeed.
My thought for the day: Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of death is the beginning of slavery.
41 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
Very briefly. To my friend Mike Hill, amen! And I entirely agree that rejection of Tweedledum does not entail acceptance of Tweedledee. Further, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
I’ve read a fair amount of Judith J Thompson, always a good index to what doctrinaire liberals (that is, extreme-leftists) believe. In saying I am fond of the old-liberal dream of equality, I did not mean to suggest that it was practical today, of universal significance, or of a high priority, only that in the American context of 1865-1965 it provided a juridical reference point by which people were able to come to some agreement. Different peoples organize their social hierarchies in different ways, and it is ethnocentric, for example, to condemn slavery in the Roman Empire as an unmitigated evil, or Anglo-American patriarchy. I would go farther in saying that the tit-for-tat arguments so often used by conservatives who condemn “reverse discrimination” may only confuse the question at hand–Humpty Dumpty’s “Who’s to be master?”–and weaken the resolve of those who might otherwise be better prepared to resist enslavement.
That said, there is some dignity and humanity in efforts to accord citizens roughly comparable civil rights, and since this approach is part of our tradition, I cannot entirely part with it without experiencing a sense of loss. On the other hand, there is a more serious question, and that is, “In a republic, who is a citizen?” The answer, clearly, is not everyone who happens to reside within the boundaries. The authors of Dred Scott had set of criteria–quite reasonable and honest–while judges post-1865 had another. Today, one thought-experiment that can be useful is to decide in the abstract who a citizen might be. I don’t think race and ethnicity, without a good deal of revolutionary bloodshed, could be restored as criteria even theoretically, but economic independence from the government might be a start. That would eliminate people on welfare but also government employees like public school teachers, bureaucrats, and politicians. One small step for man…
42 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 20 August 2008:
Nobody has the power to do it to us. We can only do it to ourselves. Not their strength but our weakness is the problem. A large part of that weakness is characteristic American ignorance of the past, carelessness for the real (as opposed to imaginary) future, and intellectual, cultural, and religious shallowness.
GOM #26. My southern reading list is http://www.lewrockwell.com/Columnists/Clyde Wilson. Or it can be reached through http://www.lsinstitute.org. It needs updating.
43 Comment by Tobias on 20 August 2008:
“I understand why blacks vote for a black candidate, though by the same token Germans should revere the memory of Adolf Hitler and Georgians would have a statue of Stalin in his home town. (Oops.)”
Also comparable is the bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky that was restored to the courtyard of Moscow police headquarters in 2005, during Putin’s presidency. (Oops.)
44 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
Clyde Wilson
You hit the nail right on head. European Americans have internalized their own oppression. However, I am going to make the assumption that there is a limit to this. When the misery index is high enough, they just might revolt against their racial and economic dispossession. The price for internalizing the oppression might not be hig enough right now. I think the oppression is internalized becsue it is percieved as adaptive. That is to say, it has something to do with fear of loosing a job and not being able to support ones family. That would be an immediate death sentence for most White Males. However, their economic dispossession will continue apace. Then there will no longer be any incentive to internalize the oppression
Were it not for the new suburbs of Weddington and Waxhal..and the life supporting central air conditioning that comes with these monstrocities called McMansions …post-1965 immigration would have been shut down thirty..twenty…ten years. Do the thought experiment. If you accept this as being obvious, you can start to see clearly what the contours of the revolt will look like. The safety valve may be shut sooner than you think. If it does shut tight very soon, we thank the environmentalist form for their hard work at protecting open space,farm land and endangered species
45 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
Maybe it will happen, but in the 25 years I spent discussing the Revolt of the Middle with Sam Francis and also with Don Warren, I never saw a flicker of what they were predicting. Not since the hardhat upsurgence for Wallance have the men from MARS tried to seize the initiative, and the sons today have a lot less fire than their fathers had. Even if the border were sealed today and some effort were made to repatriate some illegals, much damage to the psyche has already been done. Let us just tot up a few of the obvious changes between, say, 1968 and 2008: the teaching of history and literature is controlled by anti-Western anti-American Anti-Christian leftists, the pop culture that informs the minds and character of so many young Americans has crawled into the gutter and every day seems to crawl deeper, Americans under 30 destroy their minds and rot their souls on the internet, instant-messaging, and video games. We accept the murder of born children as an act somewhere between laudable and unfortunately necessary. We are in many many respects well beyond Huxley’s Brave New World, and there is at this point no end to the devolution in sight. The only bright spots are what a few decent people are doing here and there. For the rest, America today is a cross between Brave New World and Philip K. Dick’s nightmare, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, from which the vastly inferior and less insightful Bladerunner (a wonderful movie, lest I be misunderstood) was made.
The reason why an Obama presidency could be a devastating blow, perhaps a death blow to our future–rather than an opportunity for people to wise up–is the symbolic effect of empowering not just the Left but the anti-White/anti-European left. I had to swallow hard to accept the fact that the trailer-trash Billy J. Blythe could be our President. Even the name Obama is too much for our fragile national identity to endure, much less the reality. I don’t pretend to know the future, and I hope it turns out as Horace Grady and others predict–though their scenario, too, could become a nightmare–but as Clyde Wilson taught me in 1980, when I was tempted to vote for Carter in order to hasten the process of national discontentment, it is never right to support evil in the hope of some positive benefit down the road. Ailinon ailinon eipe to d’eu nikato!
46 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
On Dzerzhinsky, it may be worth noting that the great public statue of “Iron Felix” has not been restored, only a smaller bust in police headquarters. Perhaps it is loyalty to the founder of the Cheka or a mark of the respect to the Poles. (I suppose I have to say that is a joke).
47 Comment by Horace Grady on 20 August 2008:
Barack Obama has the potetnial-great potetnial-to issue the death blow. It will start with repressive anti-hate speech legislation. By the way, I think its safe to say he hates his late white mother. There may very be some weird psychodynamics being played out over the next four years.
The Bush administration was very concerned about a revolt takng place right after 9/11. However, Rudi Giulliani stabilized the situation when he told everyone to go to Braodway play and to continue worshipping the Yankees and Derick Jeeter.
True story. December 24 2006 at a Christmas party in Weddington a middle class White Guy-married with kids-came up to me and said “Hey are you a Yankee fan or a Met fan”. This seems to be the only way White guys can relate to each other these days. We talked for awhile. His wife came over and one thing led to another. They said that they had just fled the Silicon Valley area. They couldn’t afford the housing prices…property taxes. ..and they said emphatically that they and their children were traumatized by the large number of asians in the area ..especially the fact that their Euro-Ameriacan children were a racial minority in a school system that was majority Asian. They said they felt like foreigners in their own country…. couldn’t get the hell out of the Silicon Valley area fast enough.
I have no idea where or how goverment planners in the weddington/waxhal area get the the water to the White Refugees to the Charlotte suburbs. To me it seems to be a miracle. Don’t give up on the possibility of a big revolt.
There are defintitely discrepancies in the minds of Euro-Americans.There have been several major poles of european Americans about the view of the future of the United States. The polls clearly show that they understand that something has gone terribly wrong in America. A majority of them are fearfull that their children don’t have a future in America. When polls are taken of hispanic/asian and muslims, the result is just the opposite.
48 Comment by Irving Babbitt on 20 August 2008:
The fallacy in the argument that Obama will cause a reaction is that it is based on the assumption that most people are moved by ideas rather than the reality (and the perception) of power. Thus the reality of an Obama presidency would most likely increase support for not only more “anti-white racism” but also the destruction of what little remains of those standards, habits and traditions that are associated with “dead white males.”
Obama has benefited by the new ethos of political correctness that might be described by the practice of judging (in the most inverted manner possible) an individual by the merits and demerits attributed to their ancestral group or other status conferred by membership in a victimological (or oppressor) category. The success of the Obama campaign suggests that the ethos of political correctness has already triumphed.
49 Comment by Another Chris on 20 August 2008:
>John Rutowicz: The future (in this world, at least)
>seems hopeless. I am teaching my daughters German
>for academic purposes, but perhaps for emigration
>purposes as well. Although Germany seems every bit as
> suicidal as the U.S. Maybe Icelandic is the answer?
Teach them Russian.
It was great seeing the Russian response to the parade foreign sodomites tried to put on in Moscow last year.
50 Comment by Rechill on 20 August 2008:
BOTH Obama and McCain will lead to amnesty, both of them will lead to more wars, both of them will lead to more spending and more debt thus more sickness of the dollar. Both are tools of the global elite. So, why prolong the misery of the collapse of the USA? Let’s get it done quickly, vote for McCain. Why? Because he is the WORST candidate. Then, when things get so bad, so quickly, maybe THEN we can get crackin’ on the new Jeffersonian revolution!!! Ron Paul’s face will grace the new rebel flag.
51 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 20 August 2008:
#41 Dr. Wilson
Thank you.
Perhaps this old dog can learn a trick or two.
52 Comment by John Smith on 20 August 2008:
“but quite another to ask me to put the needs of my own children . . . behind the needs of other people”
But of course the people who push these programs aren’t putting the needs of their children behind those of others, their children are hardly affected. Anti-racism is righteousness imposed on the classes below them which, just coincidentally, helps to eliminate them as a political threat. And so . . .
“Bubba has got better things to worry about . . .”
As I say, divide and conquer class warfare. This sort of antipathy is part of the problem. “Bubba” (particularly if you’re using the usual meaning of that term – lower class whites who don’t live in liberal states or areas like Maine or Oregon) isn’t the problem. He didn’t come up with affirmative action or open borders, nor did he come up with Obama. Obama is a product of the Universities, in more ways than one. Any real influence by “Bubba” is barred except the gun, can you blame him for not wanting to kill and die for things that should never have been an issue in the first place? Your white driver will be among the very few such who will vote for Obama, something that can’t be said in enclaves of privilege in places like Austin.
“a society that is legally color-blind”
France tried that. Didn’t work.
53 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
I fear Mr. Smith has not quite followed the argument or, for reasons I do not understand , wishes to misrepresent it. The point I have made in speaking of the logic of affirmative action is not that a protected elite class does or does not believe what it says but that the ethical arguments it uses are widely accepted to the point that it is not safe to contradict them. Obviously, since the days of Aristotle and Herodotus, we have known that tyrants champion the rights of the weak in order to prevent more competent people from challenging their authority. After a certain age, only a fool would think that Kennedys and Rockefellers are sincere champions of the poor. But that is not the subject at hand, and a little closer attention to the argument would produce a more coherent discussion.
On the question of Bubba, you are inventing classism and then attributing it to another without any justification. Bubba’s daddy and granddaddy were good men whom I knew and hunted and fished with. In the current generation, however, Bubba is too often a deracinated TV-watching sports fan. It is not a question of blaming anyone, and I cannot imagine where the notion of not “wanting to kill and die” entered into the question. Bubba has been stripped of his identity by public schools and the media. In a crisis he might turn and prove, in Hank Jr.’s memorable words, that “country folks can survive,” but that remains to be seen.
Finally, I think I have already answered the question about “legally color blind” in saying it was the product of the old-liberal tradition that informed so much in our political traditions. As an non-liberal even in the 19th century sense, I cannot fairly be accused of harboring liberal illusions. Still, as part of a soft national compromise, we agreed to certain lies for a hundred years, like the lie that democracy works or the lie that North and South fought for equally good motives or the lie that America was a civilized country. These were useful illusions or myths, and though they were obstacles to the deeper self-examination we needed and still need, they helped us get along from day to day. We do not need to mourn their passing any more than we should wax nostalgic about the 1950’s, but we might at least be clear-headed to know that life was pleasanter in 1958 than 2008 and that the fiction of the rule of law made it somewhat easier to survive. The decent old hypocrisy, which included the rules of civility, had its merits, as I was explaining a few days ago, and I am not altogether pleased to see what happens when we let the beast of the natural man out of the bottle.
54 Comment by Bill Wilder on 20 August 2008:
Dr. Fleming,
If I can voice a somewhat dissenting opinion that will likely elicit a volume of objections, I think you overstate the significance of affirmative action. While I think your characterization of the conflict associated with (harming my fellows in favor of strangers) is hard to argue with, AA is relatively narrow in its impact, I think; essentially affecting professionals and academics. The reality is, there simply aren’t that many candidates among the favored minorities, blacks and Latinos, to take those jobs.
I think of much more harm to Middle American households have been the plutocratic, “free trade” and antiunion policies fomented by the GOP over the past 40 years combined with immigration. The decline of union representation in private industry (and its rise in the public sector) have seen a stagnation and even decline of household income along with an increase in public sector employment. It has also seen the rapid decline of our manufacturing base. The full impact of these dynamics is masked by military enlistment (the armed forces taking the place of the assembly line for rural and “working class” young people.)
While doubtless my favorable statement of unions will not be popular here, the reality is they have been, on balance, a conservative social force throughout history; predominantly consisting of ethnic whites, committed to family, church, home, etc. It is the “creative destruction” of capitalism and the antiunion, corporatist policies of the GOP (aided by some elements of the Democratic Party) that is more responsible for the ills we see in the decline of families and communities (particularly in your part of the country.) The decline of the industrial midwest has tracked the decline of unionism in those areas.
All institutions have failings, of course. But I think we fall into a trap similar to the phony pro-life advocacy of the GOP, when we allow Republicans and their “movement conservative” cohorts to use affirmative action as a distraction from their economic policies that are actually harmful to the majority of Americans.
55 Comment by Jack Alighieri on 20 August 2008:
The sheer sort of fanaticism surrounding Obama ought to give anyone pause. Obama himself, if elected, will be a gross incompetent — a leaf in the windstorm of the “change” he continually babbles about. He is the perfectly fashioned Trojan horse with a smiling face whose election would trigger convulsive events at home and abroad likely before he is even sworn in. It will at least rival the unraveling brought on by the election of Lincoln in 1860.
But I would not expect Obama to function as executive before long before the money behind him reduces him either to figurehead or pushes him out of the way — as the Kerensky government was pushed aside and as the black shirts massacred the brown shirts. So it doesn’t matter what Obaba says or thinks on any issue. He is a dot on a sharply descending graph. The only thing certain is that we will not be able to surf the tide of history he is fomenting, more than milliseconds. Surer, darker hands will be necessary.
Funny thing, Obama & McCain agree on this nonsensical Georgia business already well analyzed on this website — funny position for Mr. Absolute Pacifist & Presumptive Conciliator. He personally of course is just an absolute fraud. McCain, personally, is merely the corrupt modern equivilent of a Borgia pope. Both are avatars of a vast, arrogant unconcern of at least 3 generations running — the so called “greatest generation” big government airheads propagandized since their teens, the solipsistic baby boomers who consider themselves rebels yet behave like an army of rats in a Skinner box, and the openly demented generations X,Y etc deadened by lack of education & sado-masochistic mass entertainments.
TJF’s haunting questions are how did we come this far, ie, when was the point of no return? My 2 cents is bet on the point of time that Earl Warren was Chief Justice, and LBJ in the White House. The country might have survived either of them alone, but not the 2 together operating as a tag team. The public — even learned people — still have virtually no idea of the virtually irreparable constitutional damage done in that era — i.e. the invention of entitlement theory (now enshrined in amendment 14 & not mere legislation), mandatory benefits for aliens, the destruction of adoption by “natural parents’ rights” (Obama laughably says adoption can be revived to court the religiously befuddled), lunatic restrictions on law enforcement, the Balkinization of America by reverse racism & etc etc. Not to speak of Roe v. Wade, the most arrogantly incoherent decision ever handed down, whatever else one may think of it. The indoctrination in the schools then long in force (50 years) & the destruction of the commerce clause (30 years at that time) & much else then linked up.
But for all that, could any of this have occurred if the public had not acted as willing sheep?
Maybe the problem was earlier, more cultural than legal in its genesis.
Probably it wasn’t a very good idea to erect Mount Rushmore.
56 Comment by TJF on 20 August 2008:
Once again, I would point out that I am merely explaining the immoral logic of affirmative action against the broad backdrop of Western self-hatred. This logic, which teaches us to hate ourselves as ourselves, is even more destructive than the admittedly devastating forces you have outlined. We do not disagree on this. On the economic point, you are of course perfectly right in that the American middle class has been able, for the most part to protect itself from civil rights and affirmative action–though it has left the bubbas and Joe Six-Packs to twist in the wind. But it would be better to be poor and proud than rich, deracinated and filled with self-loathing as so many of our younger people are.
57 Comment by Leo on 20 August 2008:
In the past,white liberals could always run off to Vermont or Oregon and preserve a love for diversity in the least diverse places.This is now a doubtful option in the face of unrestrained Third World immigration,multiculturalism(except European),higher”brown”birthrates,etc.I doubt the white minority of 2042 will be a liberal,peaceful group of folks and then who knows?There simply is no competent American military or police force conceivable to me if whites decide the government is the oppressor and walk out(much as blacks are currently opting out from our “volunteer” military).At least I don’t plan on being a liberal peaceful old man in 2042.Sadly,I concluded about ten years ago as the US went after Serbia that the “West” or Christendom or Europe(meaning Russia too)has a great enemy in the US as it is and will be.But the US is on the way out…as the comical stooge in Tblisi just found out.Obama/McCain will just further along the decline and continue alienating the world away from us.And that’s probably good for the world.The Obama spectacle in Berlin will only increase this alienation when he turns out to be Pepsi instead of Coke.
58 Comment by Rick Johnson on 20 August 2008:
It is only my opinion, but for whites to awaken to the danger of dispossession of their country, there are two possibilities: I believe a severe economic depression with resulting debilitating unemployment will compel the expulsion of alien groups. Secondly, a mind-set reversion away from materialistic desires and back to one’s offspring and their uncertain future in a minority white America. When it becomes not “all about me” but about my progeny, things will change remarkably.
59 Comment by Sebastian on 21 August 2008:
I want to commend TJF for his wonderful little essays – I genuinely enjoyed reading your posts.
Someone mentioned the role of environmentalists in preserving (conserving) natural spaces. I think the only effective argument young people will heed regarding immigration is an environmental one, whatever its metaphysical merit. It is unrealistic to expect college-aged kids to have much racial or ethnic consciousness; these are insights one learns with time and experience. Y must follow X over and over before one learns, for example, that culture and ethnicity are not fully divisible. The stock neocon argument that only “values” matter is very attractive as it appeals to our better color-blind qualities. Let’s be honest: it’s an argument must of us have un-learned, as it has become a kind of national mantra.
But the link between conservation and conservatism, especially if one is not too overtly political, can have resonance. The back-to-nature crowd is in some important respects quite conservative. It is the neocon revolution that has turned conservatism into a Wall Street phenomenon of cheap, disposable goods and culture. There must be a way to tap into that dissatisfaction with pre-fabricated modernity that leads the young to a fascination with urban scum because they are – and the kids have a point – more “real.” Environmental conservation is an argument we can exploit to explain the effects of mass migration while also subtly giving kids the habit of preservation. The fact remains that only European people have ever given a damn about the effects of environmental degradation, the morality surrounding mass animal slaughterhouses, clean air and all the rest. It was a huge mistake to concede this legitimate aspect of the human condition to the Left.
“Environmentalists and conservatives are both in search of the motive that will defend a shared but threatened legacy from predation by its current trustees.” – Roger Scruton, Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism.
60 Comment by Robert on 21 August 2008:
Dr.Fleming,
Courage these days has more to do with endurance than attacking, but of all the living stones I know or read, you have more of both than anyone else. If Diogenes were still searching the dark streets of the world for one honest man, I would recommend he take his lantern to some of the shady, quiet bars in Rockford and ask for a gertleman named Tom. rr
61 Comment by TJF on 21 August 2008:
I know that many Catholics today believe that their Church teaches and has always taught that national and ethnic groups are insignificant and that all Christians have a universal obligation to help equally all people everywhere. Therefore, no country can pass and enforce immigration and trade restrictions or conduct wars that protect and benefit its citizens as opposed to all mankind. This is, quite simply, a grotesque misreading of Catholic/Christian doctrine.
This is no place to go into a lengthy and complicated discussion of this point, but a few simple observations are in order. In the Old Testament, we are given the story of Babel as a warning against human presumption. Babel is figuratively an attempt at a multi-cultural empire and it falls apart because of its diversity. We are also told the story of a peculiar people whose special relationship to God requires them to defend their way of life against others. In the NT, Christ and the Apostles do teach us that the distinctions between Jews and Samaritans, Greeks and Jews are insignificant in spiritual and religious terms, but they say nothing about the amalgamation of all nations and responsibilities. in the Scriptures and in the writings of the early Church, Christians are told repeatedly to carry out the ordinary obligations of everyday life–the duties of spouses, parents and children, slaves and masters, and citizens. Even the gentiles do these things, we are told, which makes it even more incumbent upon Christians to fulfill such obligations.
The fact is that in a flawed world, we must defend ourselves, our families, our neighbors, and our fellow-citizens from those who would prey upon them, whether the enemies are domestic criminals or foreign invaders. When distinctions, no matter how arbitrarily arrived at, are made, we have a duty to make sure that they are not used to cut against interests of our people as opposed to their people. In the color-blind world of liberal theory, there would be no special programs privileging people of one color over another and people like Jeremiah Wright and Al Sharpton would not be given a public forum. But when a movement has been created to marginalize and extinguish the group you happen to belong to, you are justified in protecting your own interests and in refusing to sign on to a suicide pact.
The Catholic universalism that Tradcat invokes is a product of the anti-Christian Enlightenment that borrows Christian phrases and puts them to decidedly non-Christian uses. A good example is the pseudo-Catholic support for the welfare state, which invokes the Christian language of charity as a justification for imposing Marxist policies.
The choice that we face today is not between sentimental universalism, whether in its anti-Christian Marxist or pseudo-Christian form, and racialism, but between the historic Christian view, demanding justice and charity to strangers but also requiring us to fulfill our particular duties to family, friends, and fellow citizens, and two nasty ideologies created in the Enlightenment, universalism and racial nationalism. One does not have to be a Marxist to practice charity–quite the contrary-and one does not have to be an anti-Christian bigot to protect one’s children.
62 Comment by David on 21 August 2008:
What we all must remember is that voting for Obama confers the psychological equivalent of absolution. This is the great opportunity for all the liberals, guilt laden with their sins and those of their ancestors, to walk away from the “confessional” with their sins forgiven. They can now “feel good about themselves” and at one with the universe. It is a powerful incentive to vote for the “deserving black fellow.” Besides, even though he is an incompetant, “we can provide the direction to make sure he succeeds” they’ll say top themselves.
63 Comment by Robert on 21 August 2008:
David writes:
“What we all must remember is that voting for Obama confers the psychological equivalent of absolution. This is the great opportunity for all the liberals, guilt laden with their sins and those of their ancestors, to walk away from the “confessional” with their sins forgiven. They can now “feel good about themselves” and at one with the universe.”
No David, what we all must remember is that you know absolutely nothing about sinning, nothing about Justice and nothing about mercy. Grace is an awful, humiliating and good thing. Voting Obama is an awful, prideful, arrogant and damnable thing.
64 Comment by David on 21 August 2008:
Ah, Robert, I quite agree with your understanding of Grace, but you have completely misunderstood my post. You have taken it literally as a position I embrace, rather than as a comment on how it seems to those of the liberal persuasion who, generally, without God, have no means of obtaining forgiveness. So they obtain that “forgiveness” by the vote they cast. They obtain, as I said, the equivalent of absolution and forgiveness. Of course, that has nothing to do with we understand by these terms!
65 Comment by Robert on 21 August 2008:
David,
My apology. I agree entirely with your explanation. I am too sensitive about The Church and should let more slide, especially among friends at Chronicles. Thanks for having the guts to respond and for correcting my presumption. A lifetime of trying to understand and then defend the tradition is a thankless task in most situations but not here, but I sometimes get carried away. With My Respect, Robert
66 Comment by Bill Wilder on 21 August 2008:
The choice that we face today is not between sentimental universalism, whether in its anti-Christian Marxist or pseudo-Christian form, and racialism, but between the historic Christian view, demanding justice and charity to strangers but also requiring us to fulfill our particular duties to family, friends, and fellow citizens, and two nasty ideologies created in the Enlightenment, universalism and racial nationalism. One does not have to be a Marxist to practice charity–quite the contrary-and one does not have to be an anti-Christian bigot to protect one’s children.
Well said, Dr. Fleming, well said.
67 Comment by Jack Alighieri on 21 August 2008:
The voters of Obamanation, I believe based on those of them I know ages 17 to 87, are motivated much much more by white self-loathing as TJF correctly nailed, and less by “guilt” — but more than either by a sort of weird vicarious ecstasy. Guilt was something for the so-called great generation & more conservative boomers. The white self-loathing truly takes fire in the 60s & accelerates since then, & the gen x, y etc seems entirely motivated by it and not to comprehend guilt in any form, other than something which may cause you to lose self-esteem & is therefore to be avoided. Self-esteem as a be-all end-all creates a giant crater at the center of self to be constantly filled by tv screens, computer screens, earphones, “myspace,” facebook friends,” ipods etc etc
lso besides white self-loathing there is another sort of loathing at large these days too, aimed at the whole human race (as distinguished from the great god Me). It can usually be found on the same chromosone strand which causes people to endlessly babble about “the planet.” I have professionally had occasion to take some of the purveyors of this kind of thinking on, and if you do so it is usually important to park your car blocks away from your business with them lest you find its windows shattered after. Loathing for real and/or personal property of planetary parasites (other human beings) goes hand & hand with the other fore-mentioned chromosomes.
Do the presumptive voters/members of Obamanation seek “forgiveness”? In what comprehenible sense of the term? They don’t recognize sin, I don’t believe, even metaphorically — “that’s your vocabulary” would be their reaction. What they seek is HEALING by extinquishing self-identity into the kinda warm kinda BIG kinda cool mass ecstasy and dissolution of personal boundaries of Obamanation, already massively underway in the sheer plethora of media they are constantly absorbing with its attendant vicarious living & attention to mass trends.
You might say they love Big Brother, but actually its a kind of cult of personality beyond any particular person or personality, more the breakdown of personality as well exhibited in Obama’s two striptease auto-biographies. This is a personality in such a state of dissolution that it makes their last big fantasy fulfilment object, Clinton, look sound & sane. The Obamaman now fulfills their fantasies in turn, tickles them as in his present Veep silence despite decision already reached (OMAMA HAS ALREADY DECIDED ON VP) today’s headlines portentiously state, even as he prolongs the foreplay by silence — yet promises (wink) that this ecstatic fulfilment will be first delivered by TEXT-MESSAGING (Massaging?) I’M I JUST LIKE YOU the believer hears in the privileged realm of his or her (or his/hers?) personalized OBAMA vicarious climax. Someday people may remember that like they remember where they were at Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, 911, etc (I WAS ON CAMPUS AT —– I WAS STANDING UNDER A TREE AT —– AND AND AND –)
Metrosexual Obama is part invention of the metrosexual test model Howard Dean, new and improved, with the bi-racial element Dean lacked even spicier with dashes of Hawaii & Islam in the brew, plus genuine high powered live jive “oratorical” self-repetition which has been his whole campaign — 80% up to now in high school gymnasiums & college campuses where our ever more babyish “youth” population is both susceptible biologically tio such subliminal eroticization, plus even less sexually or otherwise differentiated for their age than any generation anywhere else in history. Go to a photo sharing site such as Flickr & run a word search on obama, obamarally etc & look long and hard at what you are seeing.
These pathetic youth are not that far removed from the dudes who shoot up Columbine & Virginia tech etc, just cooler. Their rage at the entire history of civilization (under attack in American schools for the better part of a century now) is more, shall we say, channeled — plus rallies in Obamanation are also a cool place to “hook-up” with whoever (or whatever) one feels the urge for at the moment.
Obamanation is our very own Americanized diversified politicized & ambiguously sexualized substitute for Nuremberg on the scale (at present) of a thousand mini-Woodstocks. The point being, we can’t define them by “guilt” — a word not only absent from their vocabulary but from their entire life experience, hard as it is for some of us to imagine. Real laugh is this — these numbskulls are the only ones who REALLY BELIEVE in the power & inevitability of democratization as practiced at gunpoint by USA these days as a matter of Mainest Destiny Super-sized. Not even the cynical neocons or hapless Iraquis so believe, but Obamanation does and is set — to borrow new age/Star Trek lingo — ” to make it so.”
68 Comment by Scott Palmer on 21 August 2008:
(( The national situation, while certainly not good, isn’t anywhere near as bad as it has been. If you’re old enough, you may perhaps remember the late 70s/early 80s, where there was real fear, and in intelligent circles to boot, that the US would either be invaded and occupied by Soviet troops or be devastated by a nuclear war. ))
I hope that you’re right. However, I was working on Capitol Hill in the 1980s and don’t recall anyone I knew worrying about a Soviet invasion. I enjoyed the film “Red Dawn” as much as the next person, but the only real danger we faced from the USSR was nuclear incineration — which was no small thing, of course.
In America today, our industrial base has been dismantled: we no longer create very much apart from war and paperwork. Our culture has been all but destroyed by corporatism and political correctness. Our Constitutional system has been turned on its head. Our population is being rapidly and forcibly replaced by tax-subsidized immigrants from incompatible, poverty-stricken, disease-ridden third-world cesspools. Our middle class lives in terror that the coddled rajahs of top management will outsource their jobs and throw them into poverty. Our federal government owes trillions of dollars beyond its ability to repay, and we no longer have a way to produce our way out of the hole we’re in.
Obama is a roll of the dice. We know what we’d get with McCain: “more of the same,” leading to bankruptcy and dictatorship. We aren’t sure what we’d get with Obama. It’s unlikely to be good, but if it’s radical in some way (good or bad), it might be enough of a shock to re-start America’s heart. That’s what might save us: a bucket of ice-cold water right in the face. If it woke up enough people, we’d have a chance.
69 Comment by Allen Wilson on 21 August 2008:
I’m thinking that we will see a meltdown in much the same way as the Soviet Union went. Or at least we’d better hope so.
Look for peaceful protests on the model the sixties, the Berlin Wall and the Orange revolutions. That’s the mindset of the X and Y types and their ex-hippie mentors. It will come as a result of poverty and hunger caused by job outsourcing and increased socialism and the increasing violence caused by lack of law and order. If Obama is president, look for some kind of white reaction as the young realise they are being played on with an evil guilt trip. They really are cynical enough to catch it, because cynicism is their one and only trait which may be healthy given the right circumstances.
If social and political meltdown comes under Obama, would he have the guts to massacre protesters in the streets? If so, look for all out Bosnia-type violence in the bigger cities and an exodus of minorities from the countryside as they begin to fear the whites they once disdained, as civil war threatens or happens, perhaps a military coup.
A more peaceful Soviet style collapse would be far preferable, but with the mindset of the young, it would devolve into social chaos, with the mentalities of nihilism, radical environmentalism, etc., running wild and violent until these cowards who think they are God are put in their place by armed people no longer too afraid of the legal system to kill in self defence and in the interest of civic order.
It will take severe poverty and suffering to wake up the propagandised X and Y types so they can break free for the evil they have been indoctrinated into. That’s what lies ahead for them.
70 Comment by Allen Wilson on 21 August 2008:
The next to the last sentence from should say: ’so the can break free from the evil they have been indoctrinated into’.
71 Comment by Dan on 21 August 2008:
So many people believe that Obama will somehow usher in a new age. Even conservatives who should know better, think that he will be so bad that he will shock Americans out of their torpor. That will not happen. Americans will not be shocked into consciousness, they will be numbed and ennervated. They will be conditioned to accept radical changes and eventually embrace them. The radical satanic agenda will explode into a frenzied vortex in their mind. It will be too much to grasp, too much to resist or even understand. Society will spin apart under the centrifugal forces of cultural Marxism. Simultaneously, a police state will be “required” to effect the necessary restructuring of society, to equalize the inequalities, to punish those who resist.
72 Comment by Bob Armstrong on 22 August 2008:
I would like to share just this one sobering thought so that I, hopefully, don’t have to hear this stupid statement (“I am voting for the lesser of two evils.”) again.
Voting for the lesser of two evils, spread over a lifetime, is what got us into this mess. Whether it’s too late or not perhaps you members of the “lesser of two evils” crowd should break down and vote for the right person instead of the lesser of two evils. Who klnows, it just may be a trend that will catch fire. I, for one, will continue to vote for the right person, period.
And that is why I will vote for Chuck Baldwin.
In addition, when the lame statement that we are to blame for where we are at is brought up in conversation in the future, polite or otherwise, I will plainly speak up and say “Do not include me in that statement. I have always voted for the best choice and never for the lesser of two evils.” As one who has been fighting the good fight all his life, I resent being included with the “lesser of two evils” crowd.
And just for the record, I would tell anyone who says that “Obama is better than Bush” that Obama is not running against Bush. Only mindless parrots repeat such inane statements. I would also point out to that mental lightweight that I did not vote for Bush but that does not mean I would do something equally stupid and vote for Obama.
(I am constantly amazed at the lack of consistency of logic in most people’s statements and actions. Hypocracy, intentional and otherwise, abounds to no end among the sheeple of this country. That is precisely why the founding fathers gave us a Republic with the Constitution we had that was supposed to bind us so we would not commit socitial and political suicide. Some are managing to hold that kool aid party anyway.)
73 Comment by Bob Armstrong on 22 August 2008:
I have learned to laugh at myself. As I read my previous post I see slips of my own wording that would certainly group me with the irrational crown.
I should have said that I did not vote for Bush, but I would not do something equally stupid as voting for Bush such as voting for Obama.
Humor is a helpful tool that keeps us living longer than we would if we did not laugh a lot, even if it means laughing at ourselves.
74 Comment by Frank on 22 August 2008:
@#71
Dan,
you write:
But we can’t know the future.
What we do know is that a McCain presidency won’t be much different. The only significant difference between the twins is that one’s perceived as “leftist” (black, Democrat, liberal, etc.) and one isn’t.
With McCain we’ll get amnesty, and there’ll be little reaction because he’s “of the right”. And make no mistake, McCain will get along with the liberal Dems to pass amnesty. There won’t be in fighting. And McCain will energise a “left wing” reaction against him for 2012.
—
Do you remember the Clinton years? Surely they were better than the Dubya years. McCain v. Obama is a choice between Dubya and Clinton.
Obama offers hope for a reaction. You write that “It will be too much to grasp, too much to resist or even understand.” but it requires such unpleasantness to stoke a reaction. Heat the pot slowly, and the frog won’t hop out – you can boil him alive.
75 Comment by Frank on 22 August 2008:
Not to say I’m voting for Obama, but by my voting for Chuck Baldwin I might as well be voting for Obama.
We’re going to get a terrible president in 2008, and there isn’t a peso’s worth of difference between the two candidates. The only question is whether the terrible president will be of the “conservative team” or of the “liberal team”. Whom will be blamed?
76 Comment by Dan on 22 August 2008:
@#74
Frank,
I know they will not be shocked, because that is not how people are reacting. There will be no rising, there will most likely be sullen withdrawal.
I take the excellent example of Massachusetts, which has recently elected Deval Patrick, a man that approximates Obama in more than physical similarity. His administration has been uniformly hard left and it has been an unmitigated joke. His leftist policies have alienated most of the electorate, but the media and intellectuals work feverishly to hide every failing, stifle any voice of critique or concern. In the national media there has been an almost complete blackout of the malaise.
For their part, the people of Massachusetts have simply withdrawn in disgust and confusion. Even in Massachusetts, the people are against sodomite marriage, but the legislature simply quashed the people’s attempt to put the issue to a vote. The legislature’s contempt for the people met no response. However, it should be noted that Obama lost Massachusetts in the primaries and is almost tied with McCain among the general public.
Perhaps Obama would sharply antagonize the American people enough for them to turn against his hard left program. But what do they have to turn to? Who is there to provide an alternative that the media would allow for them to know about? Or, in the alternative, instead of antagonizing them enough for them to turn against liberalism, could his presidency have a dialectical effect, his liberalism being so extreme that it makes standard leftism seem reasonable/centrist in comparison?
77 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 23 August 2008:
I will also be voting for Chuck Baldwin. The lesser evil always wins anyway and hence doesn’t need my vote. Did anyone ever advocate or admit to voting for the greater evil? Thanks to lesser evil voting we have an abortion regime in power for a generation and it was placed and is maintained in power at least partly by the almost unanimous vote of “pro-lifers”. Now we have a militarist regime in power which actually gets credit with a large part of the electorate the more Americans it gets killed in wars and by terrorists and even its supposed opponents feel the need to reassure the electorate that they will start new wars to make up for any they might wind down.
78 Comment by Frank on 23 August 2008:
There’s no certainty with politics – what you say is spot on.
With McCain there’s a fairly certain leftist reaction, but with Obama there’s a possible right wing reaction that may or may not lead to something better. Movements are easily taken over, so it’ll just depend on who steps up to influence and lead any reactions.
Americans sure like to fuss about their President, and I wish Gore had won in 2000, Kerry 2004, and Obama 2008 just so that target would be “liberal”. I dunno enough about Massachusetts, I’ve never even been there, but I suspect your governor will become vulnerable as the country as a whole changes with Obama’s election. Presently we blame everything on the “right wing neocons”, so the left is the great hope – there’s little room to contemplate a man being too far left right now.
Policies aside, Obama likely hates whites more, but he’s also vulnerable to such a charge, so his Presidency could be more right wing as a result of his defending against biases. Clinton’s Presidency was relatively right wing due to the relatively right wing Congress energising in opposition to him.
—
The internet is a source of media that isn’t yet fully controlled.
79 Comment by Frank on 23 August 2008:
Dan,
#78 was in reply to you.
Kirt Higdon,
glad to hear you’re voting Baldwin, though I’ve given up on abortion. I can’t bear to think about that topic…
All we can do is ensure those we’ve a close duty to protect, ie. our immediate family, aren’t aborted. Outside that, Americans must fend off the jackals on their own, just as the Iraqis have to fight off the neocons on their own. We can only do so much – that’s at least how I’ve come to view things…
80 Comment by Dan on 23 August 2008:
Frank,
Perhaps the case of Massachusetts under Deval Patrick can be covered in the next issue of Chronicles as a potential glimpse of things to come under an Obama administration. It is rather interesting that the first black governor’s administration has been totally buried in the national press as the country prepares to weigh the election of its first black president. Don’t be shocked when you find out why.
Judging from the coolness of Massachusetts Democrats to Obama’s candidacy, one could say that his presidency would sour the majority of Americans towards black liberals or “liberals” in general. But it is most likely that he will further the hardest of hard left agendas as long as he can. Whatever damage he does, it won’t be undone by any Republican successor. Rather, it is more likely that he will shift the entire political debate leftward. His radical agenda will be merely “liberal”, the liberals of today will seem the centrists of tomorrow, and so on. This dialectic has been going on for decades. An Obama presidency would only accelerate it.
The Republicans are so corrupt and out of touch that they could not even annunciate a coherent alternative, to say nothing of an attempt to shift the debate “rightward”. What terminology could they base a platform on? Democracy, equality, security (i.e. taking off your shoes at the airport)?
81 Comment by Frank on 24 August 2008:
Times change though – you can’t expect the trends of the last 50 years to continue. I’m very much an elitist, so I still have hope.
There are some positive cultural movements in Europe right now at least – I recently was shown an English (not Celtic!) band singing a song about the need for roots heh, and that to me is striking since the English are blamed for so much.
This about Deval Patrick sounds potent. I see he has his own Deval Patrick Watch site. Watch sites are usually only reserved for right wing patriots (e.g. Tancredo had one). So he must be ruffling some feathers.
I don’t watch TV much anymore, so the fact that I’ve not heard of him shouldn’t be thought part of a larger trend.
82 Comment by Frank on 24 August 2008:
I recall in a political science class the definition of conservative being one who wishes to further progress more slowly and a liberal being one who wishes to go more quickly.
What I’m hoping is these revolutionaries will get what they’ve been dreaming of good and hard and jump to a new dream. That’s not to say I think there’s much difference between the twins, only that the perception will be different, and sadly that’s largely all that matters in this age. So, it’s not “worse is better” but “perceived worse is better”. The mass media largely sets the perception though, so short of replacing those currently in power there the best alternative might be to focus on areas with more potential.
Conservatives tend to focus too much on politics and the national when culture and education are a hundred fold more important though. I don’t want to get too far off on a tangent, but I think American reactionaries would play a better game of chess if they looked more honestly at the pieces on the board. Bush or McCain… there are other events taking place.
83 Comment by TJF on 24 August 2008:
Writing from Iron Lake just south of Iron River, WI, I heartily agree with Frank’s complaint about the short-sighted “conservative” emphasis on politics. I brought Dante along with me and, on my laptop, the Italian text of Villani’s old history of Florence. His villains–often the same as Dante’s–are so brilliantly bad and so virtuous in their loyalty to kith and kin–I prefer them to most of the pusillanimous good people of the past 100 years. These are people you could sink your teeth into–assuming they did not sink theirs into you. Dante puts Farinata in Hell, but cannot help paying tribute to his lofty character character even there.
Whatever good we can do in politics is generally negligible and always transitory. The Ghibellines were run out of Florence and they were followed by both factions of Guelphs leaving nobodies like the Medici to take over. Dante and Guido Cavalcanti, Giberti’s doors and Masaccio’s painting survive and continue to do some of us some good. The same might be said of lesser folks like the Confederate deserter Sam Clemens and Booth Tarkington. It is not that writers and artists and philosophers are better men or matter more, but they do for many what a good father and mother do for a few. Honor your parents, take care of your children, and cultivate your mind. Oh, and catch a few fish and drink a little whiskey along the way. When Obama came up at the dinner table last night, everyone begged to change the subject and go back to fish.
84 Comment by Fred Breisch on 24 August 2008:
This is the best discussion on the Obama question I have yet read and Dr. Flemings cogent thoughts and interesting perspective on this looming threat is fascinating. I’m afraid there is no political solution for us at this time.
I was in the old Soviet Union on numerous occasions (from Moscow to Sakalin Island) while it was winding down. Some of the sights I saw were quite disturbing and the people totally demoralized. Once, while in Moscow, I was staying in the Metropol Hotel, just off of Red Square: inside all was as elegant and clean as ever, but outside all was gray and sad, the roads, even in Moscow, were full of large pot holes. Inside the Kremlin walls all seemed well. The Orthodox Church buildings in perfect condition (some irony there) and Lenin’s statue was pondering things. The line to Lenins tomb had disappeared. It was an amazing time: the Soviet Union was exhausted, but Russia was about to be reborn. Spring was just around the corner.
What I’m wondering is, will something like this, in time, be the fate of America? We have more wealth, so it will likely take longer to appear; and we have more military might and capability, but as the Soviet Union found out, military might alone is not enough. There has to be a strong vibrant culture on the inside, strong families and equally strong communities that they can thrive in. This is our failure and was theirs, as I see it. Feminism has to be one of the largest elements of our eventual decline. It is a destroyer of marriage and families.
The readers of Chronicles are the remnant and we must be ready, when the time arrives, to step in and reclaim our communities, to reclaim our culture. We need to support Chronicles and its many fine editors and writers and, as Dr. Fleming recently urged in his latest fund raising letter, at least be willing to pay for the full cost of Chronicles.
Thank you Dr. Fleming and thanks to all the staff at Chronicles.
Cheers!
85 Comment by Dan on 24 August 2008:
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for your perspective. A political solution, especially a “conservative” one, will be fleeting. Conservatism in America is a compromising posture, not a defensible position. Our attentions are best focused on our families, and our souls.
86 Comment by Sean Scallon on 25 August 2008:
I had read a blog post by Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly before reading Dr. Fleming’s post on Obama in which Drum wonders if conservatives were starting to freak about at the possibility of Obama presidency. I hope that post wasn’t in response to what Dr. Fleming wrote.
We don’t really know what an Obama presidency will entail because Sen. Obama has not been very helpful in providing specifics. We can only guess and speculate. Certainly I would agree Obama’s presidency would be the pinnacle of multiculturalism, indeed a post-racial nation where figures like Obama and Tiger Woods, neither of whom are 100 percent black or 100 percent anything, become transcendent figures in our culture where one cannot focus on race because the lines have been blurred. No doubt this dovetails nicely with the whole “Citizen of the World” aspect to his presidency. It would be a stark juxtaposition to the Bush II presidency which no doubt many see as the pinnacle of white America. Indeed, if one wants to know what the effects of unlimited immigration from Mexico or any other third world nation to American culture will be, certainly one such effect will more and more mixed marriages and more a more mixed race children, Obama’s children one could call them. If traditional ethnic cultures were broken down after World War II because mixed marriages (Italians and Irish for example), now imagine the number of mixed race marriages after Obama gets elected.
It may very well be that Obama presidency for whites will mean more taxes to pay slave reparations and white U.S. soldiers dying in the arid wastes of Darfur. But tale of the tape with McCain is not encouraging either. McCain, along with his neocon advisers, plans on making war against a white, Christian Russia instead of making them allies. He plans on signing sweeping immigration reform that would make Obama’s “one-world” America society as much a reality as Obama’s election would. Four years ago, the argument was made that as bad as the choice between Kerry and Bush II at least we could comfort ourselves with the fact that Republicans were more in tune with the “normal people” of the country compared to the Democrats. After eight years of Bush II, I don’t think that argument holds water anymore. If you really want to know the difference between the two parties, think of the Democrats as the party of Eckhart Tolle “Brand New Earth” and the Republicans as the party of Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life”. And yet supposedly it’s the Libertarians and Constitutionalists who are on the fringe.
In fact, I would have thought conservatives would be praising Obama for slaying the dragon Clinton which they could not do themselves for the past 16 years. Unlike a lot of conservatives, I do not have a memory hole for 16 years worth of rhetoric decrying the Clintons as the modern-day Jacobins, which they were, on top of being called murders, drug dealers, thieves, fanatics and Satan-worshipers. In fact I have a book in my shelves entitled “The Non-Patriotic Presidency” by Janet Scott Barlow, I do believe a former contributing editor of Chronicles, which was published by The Rockford Institute. This book both lamented and attacked the legacy of the Clinton presidency. Given all that’s been said, whether true or untrue, I do not see why anyone would want them around again. Is Obama really that bad that we want The Big Creep, the mad bomber of Serbia and the Queen of the Harpies to occupy even the Vice-Presidential mansion? Looking at Obama’s career so far (and I would recommend reading Ryan Lizza piece about his early career in Chicago politics in the New Yorker) Obama strikes me not as agent for change so much as an ambitious pol looking to make his way in the world and who will do and say anything to get going. We’re seeing this already in the general election with the amount of flip-flops he’s made in order to make him appear more “centrist” and less like a radical reformer and the people he’s willing to deny like Rev. Wright as if he was St. Peter the night of Christ’s arrest. I think Obama himself realizes that the change he represents is more symbolic and cultural than political which is why he has no problem acting like a traditional politician. It’s a means to an end. The term “new politics” can mean changes in the way politicians campaign, but so long as politics deals with human frailties and vanities, there is simply no way one can have a “new politics” without a “new man” to engage in it. Attempts at that have failed miserably.
As Sam Francis pointed out, such Clinton-hating rhetoric gave conservatives an excuse not to think too deeply about their own contradictions and problems with their beliefs corresponding to the nation that actually voted for the Clintons. They simply became another enemy to demonize, another figure to raise money off of. Are we now planning the same strategy for Barak Obama or are we actually going to come up with better ideas, better policies and a different worldview for those who are going to be naturally opposed to Obamaism? Demonization of one’s opponents may make one feel better about themselves and may rake in the big bucks, but it does nothing to seriously threaten the person being demonized. An Obama hater is treading down the same fool’s gold path as Clinton haters and Reagan haters once did, telling us what they oppose more so that what they support. If Obama wins, the question will not be so much what he supports as who is going to oppose him? What different vision will be that to contrast to Obamaism? Will it be the neocon Pax Americana? Mike Huckabee’s Wal-Mart nation or the Ron Paul Revolution under the leadership of someone like Gary Johnson? Hopefully that’s going to be discussion in the early stages of a potential Obama presidency, not the lament of a white America which will be easily dismissed out of hand.
87 Pingback by Abortion and Riverboat Gambling « Floyd’s on 25 August 2008:
[...] manipulate. We get so outraged over Clinton’s escapades, Hillary’s healthcare plan, or Obama’s Get-Whitey campaign that we lose all sense of reason and don’t realize that the Republicans are just the same but [...]
88 Comment by John Smith on 26 August 2008:
#53
The first paragraph is an irrelevant collection of straw men. It’s not what THEY do, it’s what those who collaborate with them because they are not affected personally or as a class do or don’t do. Affirmative Action and all that it is shorthand for thrives on class division, you feed what you claim to deplore. One can only conclude that you think “Bubba” bears some special responsibility for the continued maintenance of such programs, since you mention no other group, and that if only he were more “manly” he would somehow bring the situation to an end, though how he might do that you fail to inform us. Vote Republican? He’s done that for the last 25 years, and got nothing for it because, you see, the Republican leaders are of a class that . . . well I won’t go over that again.
If you would have aimed your remarks at the population in general, well who can deny it, the problem is you have chosen to single out this one group and that the group you have chosen is probably the least responsible and most affected by the programs you abhor, and is probably the least influential group in this country and least able to do anything about it, short of violence. “There’s the new truck, American Idol, and, if he is really ambitious, a meth lab” is a throwaway line that should have been thrown away.
89 Comment by TJF on 26 August 2008:
I believe Mr. “Smith” has “contributed” similarly incoherent contributions in the past. He probably means well and may even have a point to make, although he does not make it.
We all have the temptation, after hastily scanning an editorial and misreading it, to respond with an intemperate screed. Few of us are innocent. But why do so few people not take a breath, for just three seconds, and wonder, “well, since I have nothing to say other than to express my unhappiness with the fact that other people do not agree with me, perhaps I should remain silent.”
I have just been discussing with a good friend who is a racial nationalist (with whose opinions I often disagree as friends do) why it is that so many of these people behave so badly. He had no answer except to observe that the racialist movement is filled with third-rate losers who have trouble getting along in normal life. Probably Mr. Smith does not fall into this category, but his unfortunate utterances suggest the opposite. The question on the table is how to respond to a moral, social, cultural, and spiritual crisis that has been building for some centuries. The decent redneck population has been corrupted as much as the rest of America. The only point to the reference was to note that these poor helpless victims, whose parents and grandparents might once have been part of the solution, are now, alas, part of the problem. To deny that most obvious fact of modern life is, well, delusional.
90 Comment by Robert on 27 August 2008:
” The decent redneck population has been corrupted as much as the rest of America.”
Sad but true. As Belloc once noticed, ” Lawyers and experts can be formed in one generation to break the strong back of the independent agrarian class but it takes at least three generations for a culture to develope real farmers and husbands.”
91 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 27 August 2008:
In my view, it’s unduly hyperbolic to say that David Duke is “comparatively mild” as compared to the loudmouth Jeremiah Wright. David Duke associates with people who, to say no more, have fond memories of Nazism. Such people are either deluded or contemptible. Even if Pastor Wright really hates whites, at least he doesn’t condone killing them. Anyone with Nazi sympathies, by contrast, does implicitly condone widespread murder. Jeremiah Wright is an idiot, but David Duke is a dangerous fanatic.
92 Comment by TJF on 27 August 2008:
David Duke has had a checkered career, as klansma, alleged FBI informant, and pal of Neonazis. Publicly, however, Duke in his political career has generally called for an end to anti-White racist policies. He is certainly a silly person and, I am told, less than perfectly reliable. He does not pretend to be a Christian minister, however, nor does he damn his country in explicit terms or even blame black people for everything that has gone wrong. Duke has said publicly what a majority of Whites believed in the 1940’s and 50’s, though, admittedly, he has injected a certain amount of pseudo-scientific racism and historical revisionism. Wright is a uni-dimensional person, a prophet of race hatred, who puts the new poison of bigotry into bottles with Christian labels. It is poor Duke who is merely a goofball. Wright is a would-be John Brown.
93 Comment by Allen Wilson on 28 August 2008:
‘The question on the table is how to respond to a moral, social, cultural, and spiritual crisis that has been building for some centuries.’
Dr Fleming: Perhaps we would all benefit from some kind of study and discussion of this topic. At some point in the future, when you have the time and inclination, would this be a possibility?
94 Pingback by Barely A Blog » ‘The Obamanation of Desolation’ on 29 August 2008:
[...] magnificent, crisply argued piece by the peerless Thomas Fleming, who happens to be a nimble stylist as well. Here are some [...]
95 Comment by TJF on 31 August 2008:
To Allen Wilson: I have, under your inspiration, begun a discussion on the most recent column.
96 Comment by len old on 31 August 2008:
TJF: “Wright is a would-be John Brown.” Really surprised at the analogy. Brown, regardless of methods, had a noble cause: freedom from slavery which was in the cards. Wright has no cause; blacks today have opportunity and a govt breaks; they or rather a significant percentage has failed as Sowell has pointed because of culture; not because of the evils of some dominant race. So, I suggest you rethink your analogy.
First time person and it is pleasure to read this; it does stimulate useful thinking which is rare in our society
97 Comment by Bucktowndusty @ FromThePen.com on 31 August 2008:
I’ve never heard of, or read any of your material before, but I sure as Obama is God will now!
Buck
98 Comment by Robert Bruce on 2 September 2008:
The nation is lost. I suggest learning Russian, Chinese, or Spanish and go abroad. Actually, Uruguay seems pretty nice in climate, no hurricanes, good beaches, European flavor as well. Nothing can be done, short of White Chrisitian males taking off the yoke of their faith and getting that ass kicking pagan spirit back. Christians are a pathetic lot anymore. In a way I am glad it is dying a slow death.